OCR Text |
Show BY PATH AND TRAIL. 41 We descended to the land of " Las Naranjos," of the orange orchards and banana groves, and as the sun was setting entered the picturesque and ancient town of Urique. Founded the year Champlain first sailed the St. Lawrence and eight years before the Pilgrim Fath ers landed on Plymouth rock. Urique has never known wagon, cart, carriage or bicycle. Its archaic population of 3,000 souls, mostly Indians and Mexican half- castes, has few wants and no ambition for what we call the higher life. If the wise man seeks but contentment, peace and happiness in this world, these primitive people are wiser in their generation than we. I must confess that among the civilized and half civilized races of Mex ico I found a cheerful resignation and more contentment than I expected. Unprejudiced study of their social and domestic life leads me to believe that there is here a much more equitable distribution of what we call happi ness than in much busier and more brilliant life centers. The fertility of the arable land, the continuously warm climate, the abundance of wild and domestic fruit and the simple life of the people are bars to poverty and its dangerous associations. It would be well for many of us if we could change places with these people, drop for a time the life of rush and hurry and artificial living into which we of the North have drifted, and take up this dreamy, placid and uneventful existence. We deplore what we are pleased to term their ignorance, but are they not happier in their ignorance than we in our wisdom, and are not we of the North, at last, learning by expe rience the truth of what Solomon said in the days of old, " For in much learning is much grief, and he that increaseth knowledge increaseth sorrow. " The delightful little gardens and patches of vegeta- |